GOALS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Presented by ; Hakiki Mahfuzh

1 Describe Donna says that when she was a child, she
wondered what people were saying to her because words were
just lists of meaningless sounds. When people or things
bothered her, she would endlessly tap or twirl her fingers to
create movements that completely held her attention and helped
her escape from a world that o"en made no sense.
The first goal of psychology is to describe the different ways
that organisms behave.
As psychologists begin to describe the behaviors and mental
processes of autistic children, such as difficulties in learning
language, they begin to understand how autistic children behave.
After describing behavior, psychologists try to explain behavior,
the second goal.

2 Explain Donnas mother believed that autism was caused
by evil spirits. Donna thinks her autism may result from
metabolic imbalance. !e second goal of psychology is to explain
the causes of behavior.
$e explanation of autism has changed as psychologists learn
more about this complex problem. In the 1950s, psychologists
explained that children became autistic if they were reared by
parents who were cold and rejecting (Blakeslee, 2000). In the
1990s, researchers discovered that autism is caused by genetic
and biological factors that result in a maldeveloped brain
(Courchesne et al., 2003). Being able to describe and explain
behavior helps psychologists reach the third goal, which is to
predict behavior.
3 Predict Donna says that one of her biggest problems is
being so overloaded by visual sensations that she literally freezes
in place. She tries to predict when she will freeze up by
estimating how many new stimuli she must adjust to. !e third
goal of psychology is to predict how organisms will behave in
certain situations.
However, psychologists may have difficulty predicting how
autistic children will behave in certain situations unless they have
already described and explained their behaviors. For example,
from the first two goals, psychologists know that autistic
children are easily overwhelmed by strange stimuli and have
difficulty paying attention. Based on this information,
psychologists can predict that autistic children will have
difficulty learning in a school environment because there are too
many activities and stimuli in the classroom (Heflin & Alaimo,
2006; M. Pittman, 2007). However, if psychologists can predict
behavior, then they can o"en control behavior.

4 Control Donna knows one reason she fears meeting
people is that social interactions cause a tremendous sensory
overload that makes her freeze up. She controls her social fear by
making a rule to meet only one person at a time.
For some psychologists, the fourth goal of psychology is to
control an organisms
behavior.
However, the idea of control has both positive and negative
sides. $e positive side is that psychologists can help people, such
as Donna, learn to control undesirable behaviors by teaching
better methods of self-control and ways to deal with situations
and relationships (Eikeseth et al., 2007; Hall, 2008). $e negative
side is the concern that psychologists might control peoples
behaviors without their knowledge or consent. In Module 2,
well discuss the strict guidelines that psychologists have
established to prevent potential abuse of controlling behavior
and to protect the rights and privacy of individuals, patients, and
participants in experiments. Because many behaviors, such as
autism, are enormously complex, psychologists use a
combination of different approaches to reach the four goals of
describing, explaining, predicting, and controlling behavior. To
reach these goals, psychologists may use one or a combination of
the following seven approaches.

Read more : Intoduction to Psychology : by Rod Plotnik and
Haig Kouyoumdjian published by Wadsworth